Backup and Sharing

Hello,

I have a challenge in my hands and would like your input to make a
decision.

We have a mobile workforce, started as 2 individuals a year ago but it
is now 32 individuals. We have a central office where everybody checks
in once or twice a week, but they normally work on the road, so
internet is our backbone to be connected.

A Single P4 Windows XP desktop computer with an ftp server (U-Serv)
holds accounts for each of the users ir order to have incremental
backups just in case of laptops getting damaged, lost, etc. The backup
processed was handled by SyncBack SE. As the users grew the backup
requirement grew and now that computer houses four 500GB hard drives
totalling 2TB of available space for backups. We are currently using
1.4TB of the space.

At some point we needed to share information so we started using
Groove to share folders, but Groove limits folders shared to 2 GB,
which is not enough for some projects and data needs to be spread
through several folders which is a mess.

The challenge:

1. We need a central place to store information as we are doing now,
but it must allow us to have an easier way to increment space when
required. Reading posts and publications I read about LUN and LUN
masking, from what I understand I can use several hard drives and map
them as a sinlgle unit and if I need more space I can add another
drive and that would fix the problem, is that so? What we have is
becoming a problem to manage.

2. We need to share files in directories larger than 2GB, each shared
directory is owned by a single user and vieable by several others so
even if the owner does not connect to sync his data in a while, there
would not be a problem for overwriting or multiple versions of the
file.

3. For now we only do business in Florida but in the next months we
are going to start conducting business abroad in Peru and I am
concerned that the personnel in Peru will not be able to sync all
their information to us or from us due to the slow connection speed in
Peru. I was thinking that having a parallel Desktop computer in Peru
with another ftp server would to the trick and I would need to have
the data in sync between the servers, but that would mean that each
laptop would have to be a child of one of the servers, either the peru
or usa server.
This would be a simple solution, but I would still be adding to my
current problem.


I know its a lot to take on, and I have written a lot so far but I
don't know which way to go.
From all that I've read I think I should go this path (please correct
me),

1. SERVER
I need a server of some sort to handle my data, I am a Windows person
so I would prefer a windows server. The option so far apparently is a
Windows Server or Windows Storage Server which can handle mapping
several drives as a single logical unit. Now, i just need to handle
files, a LOT of them, but only files, is there any other server that
would do the trick?

2. DATA replication? sharing?
Here I am totally lost, I don't really know how I can handle this.
Right now I am just using ftp for incremental backups and Groove to
share data, but there must be a better solution in order to have files
shared and backed up. Any suggestions?


THANK YOU ALL!!
Iff anybody can help me I know it's going to be you guys, please tell
me what you think, opinions, point me in the right direction.

Regards,

Diego Arbe

Ok Ok... I know nobody has replied yet...I wrote this only a couple of
hours ago, but let me tell you where I am with my research...

Microsoft Server 2003 or 2008 apparently solves most or all of my
problems:

1---Using multiple hard disks as need grows:
LUN? VDS? apparently these only works for clusters or SAN and NAS. If
they dont work with internal and external hard drives I can just use
DFS Namespaces and map them in a single namespace as different
folders, they wouldn't 'really' be a single pool of data, It wouldn't
be the optimal solution, but it would be half way. I am sure LUN or
VDS actually do what I need, but I won't know until I try it. What do
you think?

2---Replication for 2 servers
Having a server in Peru and another in USA I can use DFS Replication
to have all the data in both locations so that the computers can
access the information always, being either in Peru or Usa. Now... how
can I TELL a laptop which server to connect to? do I need to tell them
anything? will they look for the optimal connection? the one that is
faster for their current location? I have been reading that some
Active Directory Service did this for Windows Server 2003, but I dont
know how this works in Windows Server 2008.

3---Working Offline and in low bandwith places
As i said before, ALL if not most of my users will normally work
offline, away from the office and if they connect they will be in low
bandwith places unless when they check in to the main office once or
twice a week. So I need a solution where they can work offline
primarily and when they are actually online, that their performance
doesnt get diminished because of their slow connection speed.
Initially I thought that 'offline files' would do the trick, and maybe
it will, but if it doesnt I will have to find another solution...
question here... if the connection if SUPER slow and you have offline
files ONLINE because you are connected to the internet through VPN,
will the laptop access the files on the server and take an eternity?
or can I set up offline files to ALWAYS work primarily on the laptop
and sync whenever the files are not in use?

4--- VPN
I've only had experiance with some software VPN solutions, never
hardware. I know that in order to get all this working I will need a
software VPN working. Is there a 'typical' software VPN solution for
the setup I am proposing? I've used OpenSSH in Suse; and Tinc and
Hamachi for Windows in the past. If i recall correctly, OpenSSH does
not work with Windows, Tinc does but I've used it so long ago i dont
know if it would be great for a large deployment. Any suggestions
here?

Well... I will leave you with my thoughts, let me know what you think.

Regards,

Diego Arbe

4--- VPN
I've only had experiance with some software VPN solutions, never
hardware. I know that in order to get all this working I will need a
software VPN working. Is there a 'typical' software VPN solution for
the setup I am proposing? I've used OpenSSH in Suse; and Tinc and
Hamachi for Windows in the past. If i recall correctly, OpenSSH does

Windows has embedded PPTP and L2TP VPN support.

Unfortunately, L2TP is based on IPSec, and IPSec does not work across NATs -
NAT translator updates the packet header and does not know the crypto keys,
thus turning the digital signature and ciphertext to junk.

So, L2TP does not work across NATs (unless the NAT is aware of it), which
limits is value a lot - you cannot work with L2TP VPN from many public ISPs.

--
Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP
StorageCraft Corporation

http://www.storagecraft.com